Sharon Di

Dr. Di directs the DitecT (Data and innovative technology-driven Transportation) Lab, focusing on transportation systems. Her overarching research mission is to empower mobility for all, emphasizing the use of technology for social good. Specializing in mobility modeling and analytics, her research integrates sociotechnical solutions to deepen our understanding of human mobility and its complex interactions with other systems, in order to guide mobility toward resilience, sustainability, equity, and inclusivity.

Dr. Di’s research intersects transportation systems engineering and artificial intelligence (AI), encompassing game theory, data science, and optimization. She is currently focused on pioneering the development of digital twins for urban transportation management, leveraging cyber-physical systems technology. Within this framework, her research spans diverse areas, including autonomous vehicle control on shared roads with humans,  multi-modal mobility optimization, and the intersection of transportation with health considerations. Details about DitecT Lab and her research can be found here.

Dr. Di serves as the Associate Editor for journals including Transportation Science, Transportation Research Part B, and IEEE on ITS, and won the Transportation Science Meritorious Service Award from INFORMS in 2022. She received a number of awards including International Data Corporation’s Smart Cities North America Awards (2023), Best Paper Award from ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Urban Computing (2022), Amazon AWS Machine Learning Research Award (2020), NSF CAREER (2020), Transportation Data Analytics Contest Winner from Transportation Research Board (TRB) (2017), the Dafermos Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from the TRB Network Modeling Committee (2017), Chan Wui & Yunyin Rising Star Workshop Fellowship for Early Career Professionals from TRB (2014), Outstanding Presentation Award from INFORMS (2013), the Best Paper Award (2014) and Best Graduate Student Scholarship (2013) from Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE). She was a participant in a long program on Mathematical Challenges and Opportunities for Autonomous Vehicles at the Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics (IPAM) in UCLA in 2020. She has been a visiting research fellow at Bielefeld University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF) in Germany since 2021, and a visiting professor at Ecole Polytechnique in 2023-2024. Di received her PhD from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). 

Research Areas

• Transportation Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
• Causal Inference
• Game Theory
• Optimization
• Urban Logistics
• Law of Autonomous Driving
• Public Health and Transportation